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Saginaw River and Bay Natural Resource Damage Assessment

Dredging Project

We finished
dredging contaminated sediment from five areas in the Saginaw River on July
22, 2001. The final volume of contaminated sediments removed from the
river was 342,433 cubic yards.

The U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service (Service) and the Michigan Department of Environmental
Quality (MDEQ) worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to design
the dredging project. The Corps managed the project which was carried
out by Luedtke Engineering Company of Frankfort, Michigan. Luedtke used
a specially designed, gasketted clamshell dredge bucket to remove sediment
from the most contaminated parts of the river. Resuspension of material
during dredging was controlled with careful use of the gasketted bucket
(or conventional bucket when harder materials were encountered) and by
silt curtains which completely enclosed the area being dredged. The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency assisted the Service and MDEQ in periodic
inspection of the dredging operation in addition to the constant monitoring
conducted by the Corps.

The contaminated sediment
was transported by barge to a confined disposal facility just outside
the mouth of the Saginaw River. The material was loaded into trucks from
the barges and then placed within a subcell in the northeast quadrant
of the facility. The material will be capped with cleaner material from
the Corps' maintenance dredging activities. Cost of the dredging project
is estimated at $9.7 million and was paid for with funds from the settlement.